1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to aircraft and in particular to a method and apparatus for providing environmental information to a subscriber. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for dynamically suggesting environmental waypoints for insertion into a flight plan or trajectory.
2. Background
Environmental information is used both during the planning and execution of flight operations. Planning flight operations results in the creation of flight plans. Flight plans are used to document basic information such as departure and arrival points, estimated time en route, various waypoints the aircraft must traverse en route, information pertaining to those waypoints, such as altitude and speed, and information relating to legs of the flight between those waypoints. This type of flight plan may be used to construct a flight trajectory including the various legs of the flight, which are connected to the various waypoints along the route.
Environmental information for the route between the departure and arrival points, including information about forecasted weather for the various waypoints along the route, may affect a flight trajectory. For example, if incorrect weather is forecasted for a particular waypoint along the route of the flight plan, certain predictions for the flight trajectory may become inaccurate, such as speed, fuel consumption, and time en route.
In current systems, the transmission of environmental information to an aircraft, for example, may be done at regulated intervals or upon a manual request, if done at all. The timing of the transmission is independent of any consideration of the pertinence of the information or the economic benefit of sending the transmission at that time. As a result, the environmental information may be inaccurate or dated at the time of transmission, which can result in inefficiencies for flight operations, such as an increase in fuel consumption and emissions or delay in flight time, for example.
Flight plan waypoints are typically updated to signify a change in speed, course, or altitude, but not to signify weather. As a result, inefficiencies in predicted ground speeds may be introduced, which impact estimated times of arrival.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that overcomes one or more of the issues described above as well as possibly other issues.